News Brief

Tesimony favoring retention of the national origins provision in the Immigration Act of 1924 was given on January 19 before the Committee on Immigration of the House when John B. Trevor of New York City appeared before the Committee. In the World War Mr. Trevor was in charge of the Army Intelligence Service for the district of New York City.

Mr. Trevor told the committee he had made a study of restrictive immigration for more than 20 years. The purpose of such restrictive immigration, he said, should be three-fold : 1. To maintain the standard of living in the United States : 2. To maintain racial solidarity ; and 3. To preserve democracy in the Government.

“It is inevitable that any arbitrary census date which might be taken upon which to base immigration,” Mr. Trevor said, “will be to an extent discriminatory.” In referring to the opposition of certain organizations of foreign-born persons to the national origins provision, he said the interests of the U. S., rather than of other countries or peoples should be considered. It has been pointed out previously to the committee that lack of available data made it difficult to fix equitably the quotas of different races which would be admitted on the basis of the national origin of residents of the country since 1790. Mr. Trevor contended that in the different calculations which had been made by different individuals and organizations the percentages of different races making up the population in 1790 is practically the same in all calculations.

Mr. Trevor stated that he favored immigration on the basis of national origins in order to preclude race grouping in this country. Before the passage of the restrictive Immigration Act, he said, “a point of saturation had been reached where the races were keeping within their own units in the large centers of population.”

It was urged by Mr. Trevor that the national origins provision be not now repealed, because he contended, a systematic basis had been fixed for determining the quotas under this provision.